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Four MPs who have spent the summer holding meetings with stakeholders about the future of the Trent-Severn Waterway will “absolutely” recommend new waterway fees when they report to federal Environment Minister Peter Kent “in a few weeks,” Peterborough MP Dean Del Mastro told The Examiner on Friday night.

The recommended fees, Del Mastro said, “will be very, very modest. There are an awful lot of folks using the system. What we are talking about is a very small amount from an awful lot of people. And as long as people are confident that anything they are contributing toward the system is staying with the system, they will provide it because they believe in it, because they are emotionally connected to the waterway and they want to support it.”

The issue of fees first arose in June, when the MPs met with about 60 stakeholders at Trent University. After that meeting, Simcoe North MP Bruce Stanton told The Examiner fees were being considered for groups including day visitors, cottagers and permanent residents along the waterway, boaters who do not use the locks but operate their boats on lakes in the system, and anglers.

Fees for some or all of those groups will be recommended by the MPs, Del Mastro said, but he would not speculate on which groups would be included. “It will be up to the four of us boil it down to a number of things we agree on that will help close the operational gap,” he said.

The waterway, which is the responsibility of Environment Canada, has been ordered by the department to cut $3 million in costs next year. Parks Canada has said it will try to achieve the savings by scaling back hours of operation, shortening the navigation season and cutting jobs, and will produce its plan in the fall.

On Thursday, Parks Canada CEO Alan Latourelle rejected the idea of the fees suggested by the MPs. Parks Canada charges fees to boaters who go through the waterway locks, but Latourelle said, “From a Parks Canada perspective, we are not moving on fees for people who are not using our facilities. Period.”

Del Mastro has been working with Stanton, Haliburton-Kawartha Lakes-Brock MP Barry Devolin and Northumberland-Quinte West MP Rick Norlock, whose ridings border the waterway.

“What constituents have been saying to me is that they would be very favourable with respect to a very modest fee that would be fair to everyone and that would go toward the operations of the waterway. To say there is very little push-back on it is an understatement,” Del Mastro said.

“There is a considerable number, hundreds of thousands of boats, that are using the system each and every day, and certainly tens of thousands of visitors, in fact hundreds of thousands of visitors per month during its operating season, so there are considerable opportunities for the waterway to generate revenues above and beyond what it’s generating today.”